Fun and Important Words: Highfalutin

Highfalutin is a word with mysterious origins.  Typically, the word means pompous, arrogant, haughty, pretentious or excessively ornate or bombastic, often in reference to a manner of speech.[1](1)  However, how such a word came to mean such things is not known definitively.  The alternative spelling of "hifalutin" doesn't offer any clues, either. It's common for dictionaries to claim it highfalutin is derived from the words "high" and "fluting".  Although this may make sense, it is actually not likely according to other sources.  Long before highfalutin was first recorded, another term meaning something similar already existed, "high flown".  It seems more likely that highfalutin is a corruption of high flown. I've used highfalutin from time to time.  However, my use of the work tends to carry an ironic tone.   Between the spellings, ngram shows that highfalutin is a lot more common than hifalutin, these days. The rise in use of highfalutin also seems to roughly coincide with the reduction of usage for the term high flown.

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Fun and Important Words - Boondocks

Boondocks is a word that is borrowed from Tagalog, being carried over from the Philippines by US soldiers in the early days of US colonization. In Tagalog, the origin word "bundók" actually means "mountain".  However, usage in the English language sees a meaning of a rural and sparsely populated area.  Another word for this is sticks.[1](1)  It is common to hear both "boondocks" and "sticks" used similarly, such as "out in the boondocks" and "out in the sticks".[2]   Either word can have negative connotations, being used to refer to areas where the people are backwards and unsophisticated.  However, when I occasionally use "boondocks", it's really just to describe an area that is out-of-the-way and deep in rural country. Although "boondocks" is often cited as entering English around the turn of the 20th Century, ngram shows it's use in writing didn't really take off until World War II.

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Fun and Important Words - Fussbudget

Fussbudget is a word with a strange composition, and no one is really sure as to why.  A fussbudget is a hard-to-satisfy person who is excessively anxious, bothered or concerned about many little details; that is to say, a fussy person.[1][2](1)  The word "fussbudget" is presumably a compound of the words "fuss" and "budget".  The "fuss" portion of "fussbudget" is kinda obvious, if one takes it to mean "fussy" rather than just "fuss".  "Fuss" is simply to show unnecessary excitement about something.  Whereas "fussy" is being worried about details or not easy to satisfy.  The "budget" part of "fussbudget" is much harder to identify.  Many sources take it to mean a leather bag.  So, it might be said that the term comes from the idea of someone having a bag full of concerns.  This kinda makes sense, since we also have the word "fusspot" (fuss+pot) which carries similar meaning, but referencing a pot instead of a bag.[3][4](4)     I use this word from time to time.  I'm not going into details as to where and why since the word can carry negative connotations.  However, it's a fun word to use. In American English, there seems to be a marginal preference for "fussbudget" over "fusspot" according the ngram.  However, British English shows a strong preference for "fusspot".

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Fun and Important Words - Whopperjawed

Whopperjawed is a awesome word that really does roll of the tongue.  It's not a common word (yet).  You won't find it listed in any printed dictionaries.  However, there are some great entries for whopperjawed on Urban Dictionary. Whopperjawed describes something that is disheveled, askew, crooked, stuck in an awkward position, or any combination thereof.[1][2][3](1)(3)    One of the difficulties with establishing a common usage of the word is that it has many regional variations, such as lopper-jawed, wapper-jawed, whomper-jawed and others (with a hyphen or not).  Of these, "wapper-jawed" seems to be the most historic, with a recording as early as 1825.  "Whopperjawed" appears in a letter by Mark Twain in 1863.[4](4)   Although I don't use this word everyday, I do use it regularly, as situations arise.  It's is a fun word to say.  It's also fun introducing "whopperjawed" to others who haven't heard it before. Sometimes, but not always, the word may appear with the intensifier "all", as in "all whopperjawed".[5](5) Based on an ngram chart, "whopper-jawed" variant seems to be the most common.  "Whopperjawed" without the hyphen is the second most common.  Arguably these are the same thing since compound words often start out with a hyphen that is eventually dropped.  Whomperjawed/Whomper-jawed is the next most common variant.   Photographic example: Whopperjawed house

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Fun and Important Words - Gobbledygook

Gobbledygook is a great sounding word that almost rolls of the tongue (for English speakers).  According to Oxford, it's a word used to describe words, phrases and speech that are "unintelligible by excessive use of abstruse technical terms".  In simpler language, it's hard to understand or nonsensical jargon.[1][2][3] (backup links 1, 2, 3)  It's ironic that the Oxford definition for gobbledegook sounds like gobbledygook itself.  The word is derived from an onomatopoeia of a turkey sound, though the use of gobbledygook is technically not the turkey noise itself.   Typically I do not have the need nor opportunity to use this word in every day language, but it does come up once in a while.  As far as I remember, my first exposure to the word is from normal family conversations while growing up (1970s/80s).  For me personally, that says a lot about the commonality of this young word.  Despite it's recent entry into the English Language (1944), the word has found its way deep into our common lexicon, often in politics or government-related rants.[4](4)     Weirdly, there's a blip on the ngram usage graph for gobbledygook from 1921.  Without any way to see the source referenced by Google, it's hard to tell if this is an earlier coining or if it's a false-positive.   Gobbledygook is sometimes mentioned along with gibberish when discussing lexicon.  However, gibberish is a more general term used to describe nonsense speech, regardless to reason.  Gobbledygook is more specific, referring to technical language that is nonsensical.

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